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Florida voting fight escalates

Access to the polls is becoming a highly contentious issue ahead of the fall election. | AP Photo

The dueling threats are the latest twist in Florida authorities’ attempt to update the state’s voting rolls — a move activists say will suppress the vote by getting rid of legal voters, but supporters argue will help prevent fraud. Last month, state administrators began the scrub, using drivers’ license records, state employee rosters and other information to determine if foreign nationals have illegally registered to vote.

If the comparison indicates the voter is not an American citizen, he or she will receive a notification letter giving them up to 60 days to request a hearing. They can then provide proof or be stricken from the rolls.

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Voter registration organizations, good-government advocates and liberal activists cried foul, claiming that the system is an end run around the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 and other laws designed to protect minorities’ access to the polls. The purge, they point out, has snared dozens of native-born people and others who are legally eligible to vote, including African Americans, naturalized Haitians and Latinos — and a decorated World War II combat veteran.

Access to the polls is becoming a highly contentious issue ahead of the fall election between President Barack Obama and his GOP challenger, Mitt Romney – a contest most political analysts believe will be decided by a razor-thin margin. Republican governors and lawmakers at the state level have pushed through numerous laws and executive orders designed to eliminate voter fraud, proposals which Democrats say are unnecessary and will effectively suppress turnout among minorities and others.

In 2000, George W Bush won the presidency over Al Gore, his Democratic rival, after taking Florida by just 537 votes - a development that spurred a bitter, divisive fight over the statewide recount, a battle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. So far, Florida has notified roughly 2,600 registered voters that they may not be qualified to vote; the Miami Herald reported that in Miami-Dade County about 385 people who were purged were actually American citizens — and just 10 were not.

The Advancement Project, a voting rights organization, sent a letter to the Justice Department last month urging action, alleging the poorly designed system echoes Florida’s checkered voting history, including a purge just before the 2000 Bush-Gore election. In the last week, local chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights sued the state over the purge, and the Justice Department last month asked Florida to explain itself.

Teabaggie TROLL. Ugh. Your discourse truly helps. Not. Since when does the government get the right to do its darndest to keep the citizens from voting- oh yeah- in Iran, etc. Go live there- you will probably enjoy your stay.

Well hang my CHAD another fricking problem with voting in Florida who would have thunk it. Vote for Mohammad Goldstein for President. Obama has a copy of The Plot to Overthrow and so does every other idiot politician in Washington. You want real answers on how to fix this nation go get a copy for nothing on the net it will slap the silly right out of your politics and CHAD!

It is really sad to see the Republicans resort to such dishonest tactics in order to try and win an election. It is also sad that the Republicans do not seem to feel they have better policies to win votes, so they resort to voter supression and make up lies that voter fraud is an issue when there are no facts to support such a conclusion. Why disenfranchise people from participating democracy? I guess democracy for Republicans is only useful when it is their supporters voting as opposed to Democrats voting.

It is really sad to see the Republicans resort to such dishonest tactics in order to try and win an election. It is also sad that the Republicans do not seem to feel they have better policies to win votes, so they resort to voter supression and make up lies that voter fraud is an issue when there are no facts to support such a conclusion. Why disenfranchise people from participating democracy? I guess democracy for Republicans is only useful when it is their supporters voting as opposed to Democrats voting.

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Here is the dishonesty that required Florida to be vigilant in pruging their voting rolls of non-citizens:

Our investigation also sparked change within both county election offices. They now get monthly jury excusal reports to help verify citizenship.

"I let every one of the supervisors in the state know about the investigation, what you found out, what the television station had found out and what we are doing with that information," said Sharron Harrington, Lee County Supervisor of Elections.

Harrington plans to ask law enforcement to prosecute six voters next week.

Voter fraud is a third degree felony, and it carries a $5,000 fine and up to five years in prison.

There is a limit of 90 days before an election, no state can purge there rolls. It is set up because of the time restraint and opportunity to respond. Think of the thousands of people who go to second homes in northern states and may miss in the mail this "new requirement." That is why it shouldn't be done. It isn't a Democrat or Republican thing, but the Republicans are "choosing" who to send the letters to against a blanket law. Sue them Holder and throw some of those guys in Gitmo for effect......

“Republicans are waging a nationwide voter suppression effort that covers far more than voter IDs, but includes multiple ID documentation, reduced early/late/weekend voting, mail-in voting, allowing college student IDs or allowing students to vote where they attend school, more restrictions on voter registration that have blocked or delayed traditional registration by the League of Women Voters and the NAACP.”

ALEC Voter ID Model Legislation provides a roadmap to this coordinated assault on voter rights. Most of the bills being debated require a specific list of state-issued IDs to vote, like a birth certificate, or in Texas, a handgun license. Some end "same day" voter registration often used by students. In others, college student IDs are often not acceptable or other hurdles are created. College students were a key demographic in President Obama's successful 2008 campaign.

“A 2007 report by the Brennan Center for Justice, a leading advocate for voting rights at the New York University School of Law, quantified the problem in stark terms. "It is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning," the report calculated, "than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls."

Lets see... in Miami - Dade County 385 people were purged off the voter rolls. Of those 385 only 10 were found to be ineligible to vote. A decision has to be made, is it worth booting 375 people who are eligible to vote to get 10 who are not? What if the 375 have jobs and cannot take the time off of work to request and attend a hearing to prove that they are a citizen, and entitled to vote? If these people take the time off to prove that they are eligible to vote and subsequently they lose their jobs are the republicans going to support these people until they find a job with similar pay and benefits? I am all for preventing people ineligible to vote from voting, but when the method used has an error rate of slightly over 97% the only logical action is to scrap the method being used, develop a new one, and test it well before the election.

This action is blatant abuse of power -- there have been NO validated examples of voter fraud in FL. What we have is a tea party governor who's accustomed to buying whatever he wants, even if it's illegal. This joker barely escaped going to jail for defrauding Medicare (his lower level managers went to jail and, we would assume, got paid handsomely for taking the hit for rick) and he spent incredible amounts of money on TV advertisting to win the governorship. His "purge" is nothing more than a tea-party backed, racist-driven stunt to please his ultraright base.

The voters of FL are already fed up with this joker and his disapproval ratings are among the highest in US history. All we need is the next election to turn him out.

This action is blatant abuse of power -- there have been NO validated examples of voter fraud in FL. What we have is a tea party governor who's accustomed to buying whatever he wants, even if it's illegal. This joker barely escaped going to jail for defrauding Medicare (his lower level managers went to jail and, we would assume, got paid handsomely for taking the hit for rick) and he spent incredible amounts of money on TV advertisting to win the governorship. His "purge" is nothing more than a tea-party backed, racist-driven stunt to please his ultraright base.

The voters of FL are already fed up with this joker and his disapproval ratings are among the highest in US history. All we need is the next election to turn him out.

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Your claim that "there have been NO validated examples of voter fraud in FL" is demonstrable false.

This is not the first time Republicans have been busted attempting these shenanigans.

Just last week a federal judge struck down a recent Florida law which greatly restricted the practices of voter registration volunteers ........

..... such as the infamous, communist-sympathizing League of Women Voters. LOL

They may look harmless but they're trying to destroy America.

ST. PETERSBURG — Veteran League of Women Voters volunteer Mary Berglund had been registering voters since 1986, until the civic group a year ago abruptly halted its 72-year practice in the face of a new Florida law restricting voter registration campaigns.

But Berglund and her civic-minded colleagues gathered in front of a Pinellas elections office Wednesday to announce they are getting back in the game. After a federal judge last week temporarily blocked parts of that new elections law as violations of the First Amendment, the League of Women Voters and other groups are resuming their nonpartisan registration efforts.